Gym Dogs fail to advance

Posted: Saturday, April 16, 2011

By JEFF ARNOLD

CLEVELAND - Jay Clark struggled to come up with a suitable explanation, perplexed by the mystery he had seen unfold in front of him Friday afternoon.

As mentally locked in as the No. 8-ranked Gym Dogs had been for the past two weeks, as spectacular as warm-ups were for the morning six-team qualifying session at the NCAA championships, Clark never saw what followed coming.

Not by a long shot.

Georgia struggled from the start of perhaps its most forgettable performance of the season, finishing the day tied for fourth with Arkansas with a score of 195.450 and failing to advance to today's Super Six.

Oklahoma, which registered a session-high score of 196.775, advanced to the Super Six from the morning semifinal round along with Michigan and defending national champion UCLA.

Georgia had qualified for the Super Six 17 straight times before failing to reach nationals last season.

While nothing was assured this weekend for a team with only two seniors, Clark was convinced Georgia had been battle-tested enough this season to put something special together.

It never happened.

"I would have bet we would have had our best meet of the year," he said. "Not our worst. But for whatever reason, the wheels seemed to come off.

"We're all pretty devastated right now."

Georgia dealt with some expected ups and downs during Friday's semifinal session. But many of the hiccups that emerged from the Gym Dogs' performance were downright head-scratching.

The unexplainable miscues started on bars - an event that had been Georgia's best throughout the season.

Shayla Worley kicked the low-bar going into her dismount and Gina Nuccio's legs buckled - a result of a back injury that had nagged her for much of the season.

Georgia had been tight in first events before, and Clark expected things to eventually turn around.

They never did.

Georgia's beam showing didn't measure up to expectation despite a 9.80 from Cassidy McComb. That gave way to the floor exercise, where the Gym Dogs experienced their worst showing of the day.

Before the event, Clark encouraged his team to relax, telling them with a solid push, they could find their way into the Super Six by the meet's end.

Instead, the mysteries continued.

Hilary Mauro, who hadn't missed a double front all year, couldn't manage to execute one Friday, resulting in an event score of 48.425.

"That was probably the last nail in the coffin," Clark said.

The Gym Dogs bounced back a bit in the vault, registering their best score of the day behind Noel Couch's 9.90.

But by then, it was too late to catch the leaders, leaving Georgia with more questions than answers heading into the offseason.

Afterward, Clark found difficulty in consoling his team. For all the hurdles Georgia cleared with injuries and other setbacks just to reach their 28th NCAA championship in 30 years, Friday's struggles left the Gym Dogs feeling empty.

Many of them left the Wolstein Center floor in tears, disappointed by an early exit, knowing it was much too early to comprehend exactly what went wrong.

McComb couldn't put a definite timeline of how long that would take.

"That's the hardest part is that you can't figure out why the mistakes happened," said McComb, who finished second in the all-around during Friday's morning session with a score of 39.440. "Those things never happen, so that's when you beat yourself up even more because you don't understand why they happened and why they occurred."